


ouroboros

by booooin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Astrology, Historical, Historical Fantasy, Historical References, M/M, Magic, Race, Religion, Social Issues, Traditional Astrology, Violence, kids with magical powers, social stigma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2018-09-03 03:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8695288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booooin/pseuds/booooin
Summary: Around 1000 BC, Ryou, a bad omen with white hair, is under an unlucky star. Across the world, Bakura is a feral child just trying to survive in a world that seems set against him.





	1. Prologue

* * *

 

Prologue

* * *

 

 

The General rode best at dawn, having followed a strict regimen since boyhood. He had slept poorly the night before and, today, his men bawled loudly and walked drunkenly behind him. Knowing that the next day's battle would mostly likely be a simple affair, the men had gotten drunk late into the night. The General hadn't seen the point of interfering. The battle would, most likely, last until noon and they would be well received back home by sunset the next day.

The men he would face today, if you could call them that, as women and children were known to make up the bulk of the army, were a motley crew of loose bandits who had fashioned themselves the Bandit Ring. For the past decade, the Bandits had pillaged small villages on the edge of the empire far from official policing. They were a brutal people and their ravishes had spread from word of mouth to folklore, every story more exaggerated than the last.

The General knew that the bark was loud but, in this case, that the bite would be manageable, if one were to come at all. Defenseless people tended exaggerate their demise and no untrained group of thieves could survive an Imperial fleet.

The Great King of Assyria had ordered him, an established veteran of sixty, to wipe out the annoyance the rumors caused his reign. He'd been given 1000 well trained soldiers to do the job and expected to face 500 vagrants and twenty horses who fought with knives strapped to sticks and no military formation. The General wasn't sure why the King had decided to fund the mission – a small tribe of bandits was no threat to the nation – and could only guess that one of the court officials was using the existence of the Bandits for some political purpose. It wasn't his business what the King decided to spend tax money on. He had already purchased a quiet villa for his impending retirement before he left and was ready to make the transition from severe military man to dedicated family man.

The planning the night before had been a formality. They had decided to use a standard, outdated triangle formation to minimize their losses and deal with the problem as effectively as possible. Vagrants, like children, fought loosely and had no tactics. Most of the evening had been spent drinking victory wine some soldiers had stolen from a nearby village while younger commanders flirted with the General, congratulating him on his career and hoping for a good word or two to the Imperial General prior to his departure from political life.

The Bandits's camp, when they arrived, however, was empty. There was one moment's shock before someone laughed.

“They chickened out!” a voice taunted and the entire army cheered. The noise was deafening and the General irritated. The mission would take longer if they had to hunt for their victims.

There was barely any time to register what had happened when the General's men started dropping like flies mid-jeer. Laughing faces turned into death or horror and people began to scream.

“Turn back!” The General yelled because he could not see how the men were dying. They were alone in the desert and, yet, his soldiers were becoming corpses on the ground with eyes wide open and tongues hanging out.

The scramble backwards animated what was left of the General's troops and he, used to thinking quickly on the battlefield, estimated that he had only 200 men remaining.

Then, starting from behind them, men began to materialize until the General's troops, the terrified living and the piles of the dead, were surrounded by archers ready to release their arrows, two arrows pointed right at each and every remaining man.

Only one archer aimed his arrow at the General, a boy on a black and white spotted horse with wild, white hair and a huge, red robe. His face was split into a crazy grin as he raised an eyebrow, closed the other eye, and pulled his bow.

“Boo,” said the kid as he and his men took out what was left of the soldiers.

 

* * *

 

The Merchant was one of the few who understood that everything was relative. What was everyday in Ur would register as delightfully strange to the Hans and become, perhaps, worshipped by the Aryans. He could take something off the street in the Middle Kingdom, something as common as an indigo satchel some impoverished widow made and sold – a common story to every city – and flip the thing for an astronomical price back home from wealthy elites who had a fetish for exotic items.

The profits of his job as high as he wanted but the risks were just as steep. The Merchant would be a rich man when he retired – his due for his bravery in conquering the deserts and the Great Plateau.

What he lived for when he had been an able bodied young man had been the things that were universally strange. It was rare to find curious things that horrified the peoples of any land, no matter where you were to bring them. True freaks of nature, as the Merchant called them, were as likely to appear in an empty nomadic landscape as well as a robust city crawling with activity. These objects had trespassed the boundary of familiar and foreign. They would always be considered strange.

In his entire career so far, the Merchant had found only two truly strange artifacts – a three eyed crow who spoke the name of whoever it saw and a set of conjoined horses with two heads, four front legs, and two hind legs. He had run into the crow on his first expedition to the Great Plateau, considered himself blessed, and had been addicted to wandering ever since. The horse had been the property of a court official in the Middle Kingdom who the Merchant had met on his second trip to the country.

This journey would be the Merchant's last. He was older and richer than he had ever been and wanted to settle down and enjoy the life he had earned. Hungry for a last look at some oddities, the Merchant went further than he had ever gone this time – all the way to the edge of the world.

The edge of the world, however, proved disappointing. There were a couple of fishing villages here and there, almost like the fishermen of the Mediterranean. After filling his cartel with silk and tea, the Merchant resigned himself to the year long journey home to Assyria and his remaining lifespan to serenity and boredom.

The night before he would set out a servant from a local aristocrat sought him out.

“...看个东西,” was all the Merchant could understand in what limited Guo Hua he had picked up and realized the man wanted to show him something.

They visited the home of the aristocrat, an eccentric who was steadily losing all the family wealth he had inherited to a number of strange hobbies and addicting satisfactions. The Merchant had visited the manor several times already in his stay. There had always been something he could buy cheap that would sell exponentially well back home. The home had been covered with paintings on silk and carved stone when the Merchant found it. Now, as he walked through it a last time with the servant, he realized it had become almost empty.

There was an open garden where a crowd of twenty of so people were gathered, all wearing white, in a circle. No one spoke and, when the Merchant entered the space, every eye landed on him.

The Merchant sensed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the situation and felt for the blade he kept strapped to his leg. Though no one was armed, the tension was severe.

“...送给您...礼品”

The Merchant couldn't understand most of what the servant said but picked out the word for gift somewhere in the mix and saw the servant gesture for him to step forward through the crowd. The Merchant hesitated, obeyed.

At the center of the circle, a boy was naked, spread eagled in manacles. His hair and body were an inhuman shade of white and black snakes, poisonous, were wrapped around his thighs, wrists, neck, and face. The boy stared at the Merchant, not fighting and breathing steadily.

At his side was the aristocrat the Merchant had grown somewhat familiar with during his stay in the city. He was collapsed in a set of white robes, eyes staring at nothing, stone cold and dead.

The servant grabbed the Merchant's soldier, startling him. “Death,” he said, a word the Merchant was all too familiar with, naming the boy with a pointed hand.

 


	2. unkind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryou and Bakura inch towards meeting. Their lives are unkind.

Ryou killed his mother when he was born. When the midwife pulled him out whole, she had screamed because there was so much blood.

An astrologer from the Middle Kingdom was visiting their village at the time. He was a long haired man, dressed in embroidered clothes and brought treats no one had ever dreamed of making to their town. For fun and research, he drew the chart of the birth he happened upon. The peculiar violence of it made him curious.

“Saturn and Mars,” he spoke up, “crossing the ascendant and sparing the Sun and Moon. This child will kill both his father and mother and bring the destruction of this land.”

Ryou's father, not wanting an empty home and an infant he could not take care of, married two weeks after his wife's death. The girl he took in was tiny, barely thirteen, and hated touching the strange, little body with strange wisps of white hair. The other villagers called the thing a ghoul.

They had a family dog that Ryou's father took hunting with him and brought back every night, smiling with a rabbit or two between her teeth. The dog liked the fire in the center of their one roomed house and curled up close to it at night. Ryou, who spent his time in corners gathering dust, would crawl and put his arms around the dog. She nurtured him when no one else would and he grew up a false pup in her litter.

Ryou's third winter was long and hard. The village women had not gathered enough grain to last through it and the men could not find enough deer in the woods. All they had was firewood, too much warmth, and nothing to eat.

The woman Ryou's father took as his wife was crying, trying to hide her eyes, to not look at the dog, when her husband, silent, sharpened a blade. The dog was curled by with Ryou, as always. His father stood up, walked towards him, not meeting their eyes, and picked him up by the back of his neck.

The next thing Ryou knew, his teeth were lodged in his father's ankles, the dog growling beside him, his father a corpse who had fallen over his own blade.

After that winter, the astrologer had enough of their dreary, little town with no modern conveniences and wrote for ships to return home. The villagers had bullied him into receiving the cursed baby into his arms, pleading with him to take his prophecy and its living embodiment with him. They considered this a mercy. It was better than leaving the child in the woods to die, something no one wanted to do. The astrologer was only moderately funded in his curious leanings and thought to himself that he could fetch a small price for a child no one wanted.

“White hair,” the buyer had mumbled, transfixed, “like the dead.”

 

* * *

 

 

The only time Bakura had gotten caught stealing he's been ten years old and freaked, lingering stupidly at the scene of his crime. The man he'd been stealing from had grabbed him by the collar and threatened to cut his sneaky, little hands off. The next thing Bakura knew, the butcher's knife in the man's hands was lodged into his own throat and his wife was screaming.

He'd been ridden with fear and didn't move. He stayed standing in that couple's house for hours, until the woman had called neighbors over and they walked around him, everything just motion and wind. Officers of Kemet stationed in their town calmed the people and collected the body.

“He can't have gotten far,” one of them promised the bereaved widow. “We'll get your revenge.”

It took that much for Bakura to realize that no one could see him and, as soon as he realized it, all eyes were on him, murderous in their intensity. He'd been arrested, taken to a prison, slashed across the eye (one vertical line and two across it) for the homicide, and exiled in the desert.

Bakura, even then, had the uncanny ability to survive on almost nothing.

When he, finally, found another village, it was farther from his old home than he'd ever been. He waited until evening to break into a house just on the outskirts.

When he crept through the window, the family inside was having a meal together, drinking and laughing. He came three feet behind them before he stopped, just breathing in the rich scent of lamb and broth. Suddenly, everyone had gotten very quiet.

“Do you hear something?” someone had said. Another got up, walked right past Bakura, and closed the window.

“Ghosts,” he kidded and it broke the tension.

That night, Bakura held his breath until all member of the house had fallen asleep and polished off their leftovers like it was oxygen. On his way out, he closed the front door as quietly as he could and broke into a huge smile as soon as he escaped. He would do it again and again, sometimes letting those he stole from get a brief glimpse of him before slipping back into invisibility, reveling in it all. Bakura loved being able to get away with anything.

The stories of a white haired demon who could command darkness like a veil spread like wildfire. Soon, Bakura was running into murals and small statues of himself, none of which quite captured his likeness. That was fine – he specialized in not getting looked at.

Everything got easier after the villages began to embrace him as a new religion, shelving him with all their other gods because there was nothing easier than turning terror into worship. It didn't take long before almost every village in the region was equipped with a sacrificial temple devoted to him, filled with slaughtered lambs and banquet tables.

From then on, Bakura began to recruit his followers.

 

* * *

 

The first man who owned Ryou was perversely superstitious. He took drugs and spirits that made him go into a trance, his skin papery thin and flaking off his body, and moan long and hard as he performed calligraphy on long, silk rolls. Ryou's job was to wrap him in bandages after these sessions, which he performed in the company of art aficionados who egged him on in his fervor, delight, and torment.

Ryou thought all of it was nonsense and shook his head at the things rich people got up to because they had nothing better to do.

There was a level of wealth available in this land, more lavish and more frightening the closer to the Capital you were willing to go, that was completely foreign to Ryou. The fishing village he had grown up in was simple, with the same face, pleasures, and obstacles day after day. More people lived in his master's manor alone than the entirety of Ryou's old village.

When Ryou was ten years old, the Master had manacles installed in the garden. He had taken Ryou with him to watch the workers do the job, petting Ryou in a disgusting way on his head. Ryou had felt sick from it all. He hated the hair his master insisted he leave exposed. Back home, his father had required he keep it covered.

That evening, the Master had another party. Instead of his usual job at his master's side, however, Ryou found himself stripped and held down, metal over his ankles and wrists. They chanted in a way that creeped Ryou out and cut pieces of his body off, from his thighs, his arms, his chest. They boiled those pieces and drank the soup. Ryou got through it by never taking his eyes off the full moon just above him in the sky. When it was over, they left him there and the moon remained.

The next time they did it, they walked around Ryou with whips in tune to a drum that wouldn't shut up. After, they rubbed an alcohol all over him that stank and stung.

The third time, they let poisonous snakes slide all over his body.

As soon as Ryou saw the snakes, he knew that everything was going to be okay. He knew them without knowing them and that they knew it too. Something deep inside of him reached out automatically to each of them in turn, crying for help, and they let him feel each ridge and joint of what made they who they were. They were beautiful and intelligent. Ryou felt safe showing them the hate he had for the human monsters around them.

Since he could remember, Ryou had known animals. When his father had made the decision to kill the family dog, Ryou had been in shock. To him, the family dog was a more eloquent communicator and vastly kinder being than any of them. It made more sense, to him, to kill the woman who pretended to be his mother. He'd assumed that was why she had been crying. She was the most useless out of the group.

The dog, and the insects he would find in summer, the mice that darted in and out of their home – Ryou knew each and every one of them personally. Their understandings operated on a level of unreason that was all instinct and drive.

Ryou waited until the chanting was at its culmination, when everyone was at the height of their fever. He knew that there was nothing these people expected except pain. Then he, kindly, asked the snakes to stand erect. At once, the humans fell to their knees.

“Death,” Ryou spoke, looking his master in the eyes and the frail, old man had no time to move before the snakes went after him. His friends were excited and believed this to be part of the show. They crowded around him so he could not run, even if he could stand under the influence of the heavy drugs he was on.

Only when the Master was dead through and through did his friends realize what had transpired. They, believing themselves to be delusional and innocent, debated amongst themselves what higher meaning the abstract gods had shown to them in this living skit. They had no idea what to do with the boy, what magic he had summoned that night in their company.

Only one servant, sensing nothing good would come of the situation, slipped outside.

 

* * *

 

Bakura recruited criminals and lepers. He took men, women, and children who had lost their way. Everyone he knew was shunned from society and, so, they built their own. No matter how close to death a person was, Bakura took them if they were willing to put up a fight in his name.

It wasn't long before the villagers began to call his ensemble the Bandit Ring. It was rumored that this new, criminal organization was led by the devious, new god who had white skin and darkness by his side. They said that the new god commanded an invisible army of 10,000 strong and killed anyone who glimpsed him when they closed their eyes for bed.

In actuality, the stories were mostly used to scare children and Bakura had under a hundred people, mostly women and children. He could hardly command them as he was only beginning to learn to live with other people.

It wasn't long before a nearby feudal lord grew jealous of their glamor and of how much his villagers who sacrificing to their newfound religion. Bakura had been camping with his first friends in the open night air, feasting on fruits and sweet meats that had been left for them at the local temple. They hadn't even noticed the sound of approaching horse hooves until a small army was already in view. It had been too late to either run or hide.

A hundred pairs of eyes found Bakura, waiting for him instruction.

“Get the fuck away!” he yelled and the commotion was disastrous. People ran towards nothing. They had no horses at the time.

When the soldiers continued to approach, however, Bakura realized they had began to deviate off the path that led them straight to the Bandits.

“Shut up,” he hissed at who he could, running through the camps to grab each and every person and tell them to calm down, get quiet.

The army walked right past Bakura and his group that night, eyes trained ahead, not once slowing down.

They can't see us, Bakura had to realize. Some how, in his desperation, he'd extended his powers beyond the boundaries of his own body.

The army was a speck on the horizon before Bakura allowed himself to breath normally again and unravel the magic that unfurled without his control.

After that, they began to call him the King of Thieves. Bakura liked it. He, morally indecent, had always been proud of being a thief.

 

* * *

 

It took Ryou and the Merchant a year of travel to reach Assyria. After first, Ryou was tied and blindfolded in a cart. Then, the Merchant had realized Ryou had little to gain by escaping into an unfamiliar land, he was made to walk beside the Merchant's horse. By then, they were at the Great Plateau where oxygen was short. Everyday, Ryou was dizzy, nauseous, and felt that his lungs would collapse.

They spent a month traveling like this in silence before the Merchant got bored. He began to tell Ryou stories Ryou could not understand and get frustrated when he wasn't comprehensible. He would ask questions that got no response.

Little by little, the Merchant taught Ryou his language. He was proud to speak it. His dialect was a noble one. Ryou played a good student and, by the end of their journey, he was allowed to ride on the man's own horse at time and felt that he was the first human he had ever gotten close to

The Merchant's house was as large as Ryou's old master's and made of brightly painted stone. Ryou would only stay there a night before he was taken away.

The Merchant took Ryou to the largest, most monumental building in the city. On their way the citizens had gawked at Ryou and his white hair. This, Ryou was used to. What he wasn't used to was it happening on such a large scale. He had never seen so many people in his life.

In the large building Ryou was taken to, a man sat on a stone throne surrounded by soldiers clad in bronze. Most things, Ryou had mused when they entered, like power, remained the same everywhere.

The men were watching a pit at the center of the court where three tigers prowled around a man bound and crying. He was pleading with everyone but the tigers, in a human language the ones whose mercy he was asking for could not understand. Ryou watched them tear him apart and feast on the parts.

“Your Majesty,” the Merchant exclaimed when the show was over and the attention of the court had shifted to him and Ryou. “A gift – a death god from the Far East.” He flung an arm out at Ryou for theatrics.

The King scoffed. “It is a death-god, now? Really?”

“A death-god!” the Merchant cried and sank to his knees. “Heavily guarded and worshipped in the East. His removal almost cost me my-”

“Don't we have enough gods at it is?”

Everyone in the court laughed. Ryou felt the King's eyes rake over his body and his amusement, his curiosity.

“How much?” the man seated closest to the King's right demanded when the laughter had ceased.

The Merchant bowed until his forehead hit stone. “He is a gift,” he insisted, “worthy of any value my Master deems fit.”

“And he bring him to the richest man in all of Assur,” the man who had spoken laughed, “because he is so generous.”

The King, however, held up a hand and no one dared to breath in the silence such a gestured commanded.

“I will give you ten oxen and a year supply of grain,” the King offered, smirking, “if he can leave the tiger's pit unharmed. If he can't, then you'll just have to try your luck.” His eyed locked right on Ryou's, who didn't break eye contact.

“I'm sure this will be nothing, correct, for a death-god?”

At that, Ryou smiled wide and, when he was brought to the edge of the pit, jumped in himself. A day later, the court was astonished to find his curled up among the tigers, cheeks licked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow this chapter was much longer than i thought! i may end up having to make this a four chapter fic - let's see how the next one turns out.
> 
> btw, in case it's unclear, five years passed in this chapter. ryou spends five years in china and it takes bakura the same to get from being a starving kid to who he is now. ryou is now is assur, the capital of assyria and bakura is somewhere between egypt (kemet) and assyria. the land he'd on is not nomadic but the empire's rule isn't strictly enforced because it's so far from the capital.
> 
> hope y'all enjoyed this and to hear from you!


	3. looking for god

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryou and Bakura get a little older until something brings them together.

Ryou’s new master kept him a secret. He lived in the basement of the palace where he turned whiter and whiter every year, starved for sun. Every year, when the Sirius began to rise in the sky, when it was the coldest it got in the land, they would bring Ryou out in chains and have him tame tigers for the entertainment of the royal family and their favored friends.

Every year, the crowds got bigger and the spectacle more elaborate. First, it was just Ryou and a tiger. Then, one tiger became two, which become five, which become ten. They painted Ryou in gold paint to cover his sallow skin and plaited his hair. Before every ritual, they would read poems written about this very show.

Back home, Ryou’s father had beat him when he let his hair out. Now, they beat him when he tried to hide it.

Slowly, Ryou became a man in that lonely basement. His arms became fleshed out, his shoulders broader, and jawline squarer.

They called him the tamer of tigers. It was tongue in cheek. The tigers, in all their glory, represented the royal bloodline. The most common punishment in the land involved feeding criminals to the King’s tigers. Young, old, female, and male like - they would all be devoured by the tigers. They would all be devoured by death. The citizenry were equal in the eyes of the King.

Everyone except Ryou. The tigers wouldn’t touch him and no one could figure out why. The King kept him like a toy because he was annoyed by the symbolic disorder.

Then, he found Ryou in the basement, away from the tigers, away from eyes, without even a guard to stand near.

“The tamer of tigers,” he said, looking down on Ryou. “How do you do it? What’s the trick?”

Instead of responding, Ryou stayed very still.

The King came closer. “Being the tamer of tigers makes you the tamer of kings, doesn’t it? What do you think, slave? Do you think your trick could work on me?”

Ryou knew it wouldn’t. Human beings were deaf to the messages animals could hear. Their heads were too crowded with words, abstractions, and systems. You can’t hear the crying of a calf if you’re thinking too hard about how much you could sell its breast for on the meat market.

When the King backed him in a corner, pried his legs open, and raped him on the floor, Ryou tried to empty his head. He tried to empty his head and hear the King’s thoughts instead. However, all he could hear was a deafening sound that looked too much like hate and a slap on slap of the skin that was vulgar in its machinations. 

Eventually, listening became too hard of a task. The first time hurt. Later, Ryou would find that the second time hurt too, as well as the third time and the fourth.

 

* * *

 

Criminals looked for one another at night and in dark corners. There were always people who had fallen into too much debt who sought to escape slavery by chancing their survival in the unchanging desert. Sometimes, new mothers had to run because the shame of having no man was too great or because they knew that the man they had would kill them one day.

It didn’t take long for Bakura’s following to grow to the size of a small city. Nomadic, they moved in the desert like vultures. When they entered a town, they stole first from the wealthiest ones. Then, they passed their judgment onto the rest.

If a man cheated his workers by capitalizing on a labor surplus, they would take his hands and his wealth.

If a man blamed the failings of crops on his workers and cut their allowances over his own profit, they would take his legs and everything he had.

If a man beat and raped his wife, they would take his arms and legs, along with everything he had.

If a man beat and raped his children, they would take his head, and everything to his name.

They didn’t care about the King’s laws. The laws protected those with and they were those who had nothing to lose. Every coin they confiscated would be spent in the town’s taverns and bars. The common people prepared for their visits like they were kings. They would pay an enormous amount of money for bread and simple pleasures, always spending everything they had taken from the elite before they skipped town.

They never stayed in one place for long. There were men whose families they saved from a life of generational poverty who left with them, or told their sons to leave with them. And there was, as always, the riff raff who had nowhere else to go. Every time they left a place, their group was a little bigger than before.

Their leader, Bakura, became bigger than a god. Gods played their games with one another and bet cities with gambles that cost human lives. They were capricious and selfish. Bakura didn’t care about any one place. He was from nowhere and ruled over no place. He was a force of nature. Most of all, he was real and in the flesh.

He could rip the heart out from a man without touching him, they said about him. He could blind a man without seeing him. He could become a shadow and possess the body of anyone he desired.

Most of all, they said that he would overthrow the current king. When they started saying this, Bakura knew that he would have to do it just the way it was said. If he didn’t the King would try to kill him. If he couldn’t find him, he would kill his people. If he couldn’t find his people, he would kill everyone in the entire world.

 

* * *

 

The King became obsessed with Ryou. He kept him chained to his bed and seldom went to the throne room. He made Ryou do humiliating tasks, regularly smashed his head against the ground, and raped him every night.

It always hurt. There wasn’t a time when it didn’t. Ryou’s life became a dense throbbing. There was only pain, nothing else left.

Then, everyone began to talk about the rumor that there was a new king in the south. The King’s days were numbered, it was said. The most recent solar eclipse had occurred close to the King’s own astrological sign. The astrologers argued over the meaning, some in support of the King, saying that Jupiter was in the sign too, and others, who had not received the special privileges of an extra lamb or cow, smiled and shook their heads knowingly.

The King began to talk to his counselors feverishly, in all hours of the night, in his chambers with Ryou’s head in his lap. When he hurt Ryou, it was desperate. He wanted to see Ryou afraid and weak because it was his last claim to something he’s begun to lose.

The counselors assured the King that he had a standing army of 100,000. These were trained military men, who had fought great wars already to the south and subdued the great empire of the Nile. They assured him that his army’s weapons were top grade in technology, made of metals harder than anything the world has ever known. They assured him that his spies were the best, and that they were the richest in the land so that no enemy could win them over with gold or women.

Still, their eyes said something different. Fear, Ryou could read and read very well. It was his first language.

The counselors said all these things and they were all plotting their own escapes, every last one of them. Some planned to cross the wilderness to the Nile, some east to the mountains. Others had ships waiting to take them where a new civilization was beginning.

The King began to drink Ryou’s blood. He believed that Ryou had been sent by the gods with his mysterious power as a gift to help the King in this time of need. If he could absorb the power of the tamer of tigers, he’d gain his invincibility back.

He made all his counselors and family members stand around the bed as he raped Ryou over and over. Then, he would cut a vein and suck until Ryou couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. 

First, he did this every night of the full moon. The king in the south kept advancing. Then, the King ordered the ritual every new moon and full moon. Still, the king in the south kept advancing. When the threat of the south was close to the capital’s gates, the King spent almost all his time between Ryou’s legs drinking himself heavy on a blood that had become thin.

There were only two family members left by that time and no counselors. They had all fled the city and taken refuge elsewhere.

The sky was orange and the King was asleep when Ryou whispered in his ear.

“Let’s get out of here.”

 

* * *

 

Bakura would not see the sun rise. He knew that and loved the way it sounded in his head.

Tonight was the last night before the battle. There was no way they would come out standing, not when they were up against the King’s royal army. These were hundreds of thousands of men who knew formations that built forests around men and confused them into killing each other. They were without conscience, having killed plenty in the war against Pharaoh already and getting rewarded for it beyond their wildest dreams. They were hungry for more gold and knew that death was a business which guaranteed a lot of it. Assyria was ready for war, stayed ready, and would swallow them up.

Bakura’s men were gangsters, with scatterings of shepherds and farmers. He had around 50,000 and a good number of them were women and children. The only weapons they carried were used to slaughter livestock and they knew no military techniques. Some had killed before, but they’ve been traumatized by the event and no longer wanted to do so.

They were here simply because there wasn’t any other place they could be.

They didn’t have boats to board to escape to the islands. They were not welcome to the south and neither were they to the west. If they escaped to the mountains, the King’s men would seek them out and slaughter them one by one.

The moon was waning when they reached the capital. They would have to wait until early morning to strike. That night, they would eat and drink all the food and wine that they had brought with them, knowing it was their last.

The capital’s walls were higher than Bakura expected. When they came within view of the monstrous things, they’d become instantly demoralized. As they feasted, Bakura ordered the drums be beat while the young danced.

“I’ve led you here,” he told them, when the food was served and it was time for him to talk, “to the very people who tried to kill you, the very people who ignored your cries and left you in the sand while they got fat from the labor that your mothers and children squeezed out of their bones. Do you see how high those walls are? How much gold was spent building them? And do you know where these people got that much gold?”

A lone voice shouted. Bakura continued.

“That’s right! This is a city built from the blood and sweat money of your ancestors and comrades. Every brick is laid with blood and every nail is a live that the capital has claimed. Do you know why I’ve led you here, to this place?”

This time, voices confounded one another, scrambling to be heard.

“No,” Bakura told them all. “You don’t know why I’ve brought you here.”

Someone laughed.

“I brought you here,” Bakura continued, “So that some of you will die.”

There was silence. There wasn’t usually silence among them because there was no centrality of organization. 

“Look around you,” Bakura said. “This will be the last time you see these faces. You yourself might die. I’m not telling you to and I’m not asking you to. All I’m doing is starting a fact.”

This time, Bakura didn’t let too much time go by before he spoke again.

“It’s not up to me or for me. I don’t want you to die. I’ve never asked you to and I’m not asking now. I have no cause. _We_ have no cause. In fact, if you die, you won’t die for anything. Do you know why you will die? It’s because you _wanted to_. The lot of you followed me here because you’re stupid, because you’re crazy, and because you’re debased!”

Grinning, Bakura showed them all his teeth.

“You’re here to die because you’d rather die here than live your life for a King! You’re here to die because, since the day you were born, it’s been your destiny to die tonight, right here on this goddamn land. You’re here to die because that’s the best fate imaginable to someone born in your sorry shoes. Fucking stupid!”

When Bakura leaned his head back and laughed, 50,000 voices laughed with him and they all drowned in a sea of noise.

 

* * *

 

The King crept out of the palace at night with Ryou and his favorite tiger in a single carriage. He brought four guards, one to drive the carriage, one to watch over the tiger, and two to watch himself and Ryou.

There was no moon when they hurried into the night. The air was so hot it felt solid.

Before the lights of the capital went out over the horizon, the horses stopped walking, screamed at the sky, and began to run in circles. The tiger, who was the King’s favorite because it was so well behaved, sank its teeth into one guard until he went still and silent.

Two more were killed when the horses, scared out of their minds, kicked their hooves into their skulls.

The King was yelling in fury at the remaining guard to quickly subdue the horses because they were carrying them around and around at a dizzying pace. Before he’d finished his commands, the tiger had pounced and took a clean bite from his face.

Ryou knew the King was stronger than he was. He’d been drained of blood and precious nutrients. If he wanted to survive, he would have to conserve his energy. As he took the fallen guard’s blade and sank it into the King’s back, he picked a vital artery that would guarantee death.

Then, he appreciated the final quietness that lay around him. The horses had stopped moving, waiting for him to free them. The city was gone and there was only sand and air.

The tiger was sitting, looking at Ryou with eyes that understood what he had done and why he had dome it.

Ryou free the horses first and sighed as they left him. Still, the tiger stayed and watched him. With the blade, Ryou hacked at the dead King’s neck until the head came loose and examined the necklace the King wore all the time with his royal seal. Only then did the tiger stand up, looking over its head and leaving the wreckage of bodies.

With the necklace wrapped around one hand and the King’s head in the other, Ryou followed an orange and black striped tiger into the night.

 

* * *

 

The festivitiesmade Bakura’s people come alive again. They didn’t sing of a better tomorrow or look higher than the horizon. They continued to laugh, however, and ate meat and some of the women pressed against the men.

Then, before the food was finished but the wine was, the beating of the drums stopped.

There was a tiger in their midst and, behind him. a young man with blood on his hands and long, white hair. When Bakura looked closer, he realized that the shape in his hands was a human head.

When they brought the man closer, Bakura saw that he was beautiful. He looked like a spirit trailing after a predator that could kill in seconds and, as soon as he saw Bakura, he dropped to his knees.

“Who are you? What the hell is this?”

The young man had creepy eyes and a face without expression. “The King,” he said in a strange accent.

It was the head of a man in his fifties or sixties. The blood from it was still fresh and dripping into the sand at the man’s feet. Tangled between the stranger’s fingers was a necklace with the imperial sigil.

A stranger in the night, whose brought the head of the king to Bakura on the night of the battle.

“Who are you?”

The stranger kept his head down and Bakura couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t read him. “I’m not sure.”

The claim sent a spine down Bakura’s back and the people gathered around them became wide in the eyes.

“Why have you come here?”

Dropping the head and necklace, the stranger put both hands on the ground and brought his body low. “I want to worship you.” When he looked up, Bakura saw that his eyes were sleep deprived and swollen. “My god.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long for me to get up! I had to take a break from fanfiction but still had this story in my heart.
> 
> Do you guys like it? What do you think will happen next?
> 
> I will be finishing my belonging series with this same pairing and posting it soon, in case you have read that one! It's taken me a while because I got really busy with work, as it happens. However, I'm still in love with this ship and can't wait to write that story more. And create more stories about Bakura and Ryou!
> 
> I spent a lot of time deconstructing my Ryou characterization but not that much deeconstructing Bakura. I think I want to play with Bakura's character a lot more in the future!

**Author's Note:**

> in case it's not clear, the dude with the bandits is bakura and the one with the snake is ryou...they're not really that young in this, and that'll be more apparent later on. the general and the merchant are just the type of guys who can't take anyone under 30 seriously.
> 
> i wanted to quit longfic but couldn't see how this story could be told in one chapter!
> 
> it's difficult to try to imagine a scenario where tkb and ryou meet, even in canon, and i wanted to write a fic that stresses the differences between their races, cultures, and backgrounds but their similarities as well. this verse is set in 1000 BC, around the time yugioh's memory world takes place in canon. if you don't know too much about this time period, here's some handy facts!
> 
> 1\. the middle east/north african region is dominated by egypt and assyria but akkadian, with several dialects, is spoken in tandem to other languages throughout a mostly billingual population. written/sacred language is sumerian or phoenecian.  
> 2\. assyria is a warrior society and homosexuality is accepted  
> 3\. outside of egypt and assyria, most land is nomadic. bakura is from a nomadic people close to but not inside of egypt.  
> 4\. japan, where ryou is born, is nomadic  
> 5\. the middle kingdom refers to china. it made more sense for me to refer to china as the middle kingdom than china in this context. its the zhou dynasty, china is already mostly ethnically han, and speaking language is pretty much what it is today.
> 
> this is kind of a critique of imperialism starring bakurae with magic powers hating the world they find themselves living in. i have this prewritten but not typed and will update probably every week or so depending on my irl :)
> 
> hope y'all like this and keep reading!


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